Elysium Kept
by Laryna6
Summary: Sequel to Elysium Regained, Zero series AU. They've as good as won the war: now they must win the peace. Creating Elysium isn't as simple as the virus makes it sound. What do you do with the pieces of a shattered soul? How far do you go for family? Zero/X
1. A Feast of Lotus

_Here's the deal: I had a kiriban winner who requested Zero series horror fic. It took me three tries because the muses wanted fixit, or at minimum not making it any worse, not horror, to produce _Elysium Regained_._

_And then the muses wanted me to write a happy ending for _that_. _

_So that the original fic will remain horror, I'm posting this as a separate sequel to it. Optional 'Everybody Lives' ending._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman/Megaman in any form, or any associated properties: Capcom and other rightful owners and distributers do. No infringement intended or money made._

* * *

There had always been barriers between him and X, even if nowhere but in Zero's head.

At first, there had been the fact that X was practically royalty and Zero was an irregular who might suddenly flip out and attack him.

No, that wasn't true: the _real _first barriers between them had been the defenses of Dr. Light's lab and Zero's reluctance to kill an innocent person, creation of Dr. Light or not. So he'd left the question of X until after he'd killed all the humans. The robot masters might have been innocent people, but they were the ones who had decided to fight him. If they wanted to throw their lives away, fine.

He, when he'd been the real Omega, God of Destruction, had considered it war, the last war, everything black and white and _simple_.

Except the question of X. Of Dr. Light's last creation.

Infecting him had been a valid option, but while ruling the world with the virus after he was done had been an option, certainly, Omega had meant to use it to…

Like Copy-X, really. Build the new world, ensure that the species they wanted to survive would survive, and then remove the last threat to it.

Should hands stained with so much blood (or hydraulic fluid, really, since humans didn't count back then) exist in Elysium when they might taint it?

Omega had cared about right and wrong since he'd believed that they existed, that everything was simple, reducible down to black and white and the blood that converted one to the other.

Zero had woken up without memories, and been forced by the virus to learn that there was 'my people,' and 'not my people' or rather 'not my people any longer,' and that killing threats was indeed a good thing because it kept his people safe, but not always, because it made his people, the androids (or reploids) he had been built to protect sad.

X had become his responsibility when Sigma had been taken, and even more so when Dr. Cain had died, but X had been his to keep safe, not _his_, and he'd always known that the greatest threat to X was Zero himself.

So he'd stayed near him, always hovered near his side to rush to help or shield him but never touched, except in combat training sessions.

There was no need for X to fight anymore. There was no need for Zero to fight him anymore.

There was no need for X to hurt anymore. The virus would never cause him pain again. _Zero _would never cause him pain again. No, the virus that was Zero was what was keeping X from hurting, separating him from the pain of his past and the anguish that what he was doing now would cause him.

Zero was threaded all throughout his systems, deep within his mind. Wrapping him up in the virus' rightness like a warm, fluffy blanket, and screams would never reach his ears ever again, nor would he see that others were hurting and feel that pain as his own.

This power…

Weil had been right. It _was _so like a god's.

He could do anything, anything at all. X had taken care of spreading the virus for him, given him a kingdom to come into, and now he held the world in the palm of his hand. He could crush any chance of future strife any time he chose, anytime at all.

It would be more effective to wait until a little more groundwork was laid, though. The less collateral damage the better, even though Ciel's energy source would make it easy to replace or build new infrastructure. X was the one who thought of things like that, and Zero was happy to leave it to him.

X was much, much better at this than Sigma.

"You handed me my old body so that I'd remember, didn't you? I was so desperate to recover my memories that I might even have become my original self right then, if it weren't for the fact I didn't want to be like Weil's mockery of me." He stroked X's cheek.

Why shouldn't he touch X now? It wasn't as though he wasn't already touching him. It wasn't as though X's new body wasn't saturated with the virus.

He held X's life and mind in the palm of his hand. He could make that body self-destruct, he could render him mindless, he could do anything. Except that this was X, and there was no need for them to fight anymore, so they could stay just like this.

Forever.

X was too modest to let Zero think that it had just been motivated by what the intelligent strategy was. "Well, I was hoping that you would, but… I missed you."

An understatement, Zero knew, with all of X's mind open to him. X had longed for the days when there was someone to stand by his side, someone to share the burden with. Longed for _him_.

He found himself stroking X's cheek again, shifting the virus around and within him to reassure him that yes, Zero was here, and he was never going to go away again. He'd never let X go, either. Not when he'd start to suffer again, from the memories of those he hadn't saved, those he'd had to kill, and those he was going to kill now.

That should have given Zero pause. He should have thought about how X had almost begged Zero to kill X rather than let him become a maverick, but there was none of that fear in X now, only trust, only openness to the virus and Zero's will, and he was already touching X.

He already knew how X would react to everything (could control his reactions). So there was no need to fear, no need to hesitate. He was already touching X more intimately than any other being ever could, so it made no difference to lean forward, lean X back and kiss him.

He could do more than just that, though, and why not? The systems of X's new body had been built by the virus, everything that X was belonged to Zero now and so there was no reason not to show his affection, his approval, his…

No reason not to touch X's systems and let him feel it, make him shiver not just from physical pleasure but the bliss of being held and loved. _I'll take care of you_, that was what Zero wanted X to know. That X would never have to be alone again like that. X would have his peace, have _everything_ that Zero could give to him, and it would be perfect.

Their Elysium.

He could feel X's gratitude (so deep, even with the weary suffering that had engendered it stripped away from him), X's happiness, and X's love. Not just the adoration, the devotion to a lord or god that the virus enforced, but love.

And then X poked him in the side.

_Not in front of the children, Zero_. Came a fond but firm thought, and Zero had to pull back and laugh.

Before kissing him again, harder.

It would have been reassuring, to see a sign that X was still himself and still had his own will if Zero couldn't already feel that. Even though he didn't need the reassurance, it was still endearing. Still a reminder of why he cared so much for X. Why he loved him

Zero was still in charge here, though, and so he could kiss X if he wanted to. Especially when he knew that X didn't _really _mind. It was easy enough to coax him into kissing back, since he could tell exactly how to touch him.

So they kissed for a few lingering seconds, reading each other's reactions from minds and bodies, indulging themselves in the other's pleasure and presence, until X pulled himself together and poked Zero again. _We could find a room_. There were still honeymoon suites in this day and age, in fact, and it would be easy to have one of the mavericks, one of Zero's servants, arrange one for them. They would do whatever Zero wanted. _But not in front of the children_.

_Kissing's not going to scar them_. They'd all seen far worse.

Just kissing? Zero felt X's lips curve into a smile against his own. _Tease_.

_I suppose_. He hadn't before, but now was different.

Zero still pulled back, mostly to look down at X. He hadn't liked seeing X out of his armor before. Wearing only human clothes meant that he wasn't protected, and he'd never liked it when X was in danger. Now, though, X wore only a shift that was probably patterned after how he'd appeared as a cyber elf, and Zero realized that he liked it.

The feel of the fabric was appropriate, it fit X somehow, and Zero liked the idea of X not needing armor. Not needing armor ever again, not when he had Zero. Now when Zero and the virus had him. Even if X was blown up, that wouldn't hurt him now. Zero could ensure that he never felt pain again, no matter what happened.

He let himself feel that, all of it, how X was happy and untroubled and his, looking up at him with a smile that was both loving and amused by how Zero was acting, and leaned down to kiss him again, just for the span of a breath.

To breath into X and capture X's own breath.

Just as he'd captured everything else.

That was almost enough. He could wait until later for anything else, except…

"Stop holding their hands," he told X, cupping the back of his head and pushing his fingers up into his hair. _I want all of your attention here_. With Zero and this little peaceful scene here. The mavericks could look after themselves for a bit.

X nodded, as obedient as the virus had made him. No: if this was something that X was determined to do at the core of him, he would have at least made a token protest, the way he had about the children. The extermination of humanity was something he was trying to accomplish solely because of the virus, and so the virus and Zero's request were more than enough to make him take a break for a bit.

To lean against Zero's side as their daughter leaned against his legs. The Mother Elf, who had been programmed to fight the virus. To fight the part of Zero that had been sleeping, back then. Kicking in its sleep and shaking the world while Zero dreamed that he was a hunter.

Was she going to try to fight him? No, she didn't even have the power to protect herself now, Weil had made sure of that. She'd crept back to where X had been to mourn him, after enough time had passed that it might be safe (and Neo Arcadia wouldn't think to look for her here), Zero read in her memories. At that point, her protector, the one who had kept her safe, had already been taken, and he'd promised to keep her safe once again.

How could she fight him, the one person who had ever cared about her for _her _instead of what she could do for them? How could she fight him when she would lose, now that he was awake, and she had children to protect? How could she fight for humanity when they and Copy-X would have just enslaved her and her children again?

Children… were an important thing.

Dr. Wily had built him, Dr. Light had built X, to carry out their dreams. While the war had been on, Zero hadn't dared love X, and children had been doubly impossible, but Wily had intended for him to build more androids, to repopulate the world that he had been built to empty.

He had two sets of memories – three sets of memories, counting the ones he'd gathered in this time – of being very different people.

All of them approved of this daughter, who had been built in his image, with his powers, so he patted her on the head. "X, do you know who could get us some real tea?" For Alouette, and the others if they wanted it. "Cakes and things too?"

Zero really _should_ learn who all the mavericks were and all their capabilities, so he'd know who to give what orders if he wanted a bridge blown up or a weapon for an unarmed maverick made, but it was silly to do all that work now, when he was taking a break, just to find a cook.

He'd decided to spoil them all a bit. X, too.

"Really?" Real tea, not just pretend tea? Alouette was delighted.

"Really." He leaned forward to pat her on the head. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

She shook her head. "I knew I wouldn't be able to manage it, not with you and everyone else looking after her, but I didn't want anyone else to kill Miss Ciel." So she'd tried her best.

Zero patted her on the head again. "What would you like?" For being such a good girl?

"Can we really keep Miss Ciel?" At his nod, she smiled. "Thank you, Zero!"

"Hmm." X tsked. "I should have upgraded your sensors when I had you rebuilt. Neo Arcadian reploids… I wouldn't give mechanaloids systems like that. Well, they can make some very strong tea, I can put in a lot of sugar for you…" So she could actually detect any of the flavor. "You might like scones, Zero." They wouldn't be too sweet.

Zero shrugged. "Whatever all of you want." He'd never seen the point of eating human food, but this was for them.

"Can we really have cakes?" Crea asked.

"Didn't I say you could?" They were much less annoying now that they were able to really think. X had designed them proper bodies, since there hadn't been any pre-existing design to copy the way he had Alouette's.

"There." X nodded as a table, with lacy tablecloth, was warped in, followed by chairs, two teapots, an assortment of teacups, and other associated things. "The scones and cakes will take awhile to bake, I'm afraid." Neo Arcadia had a food shortage, and there was nothing already prepared that X felt was good enough. "Alouette, would you like me to show you how to make tea?"

She followed him over to the table, exclaiming with joy as Zero leaned back against the wall and watched them. Part of him was cataloguing the various mavericks, feeling what he could with the virus web that was himself. He had been programmed to be capable of something like this, but he'd never been conscious of the fact that he was the virus while there was an active net before. Or rather, even after he _had _known, he'd refused to become one with it.

That… no, it wasn't silly of him. He wouldn't have had X, then. There wouldn't have been any openings for the virus to take advantage of. He would have had to either kill X, or destroy everything while X watched and grieved.

There was no way he could have done that. He should have, he regretted having left X alone for that century, but everything had worked out, hadn't it?

Yes.

So he leaned against the wall and watched the happy ones bustle about, watched his daughter study them and think about the possibility of smiling.

And Zero who was Omega who was the Virus put his hand on her shoulder and smiled down at her fondly, pulling her closer, to rest against his side the way she had X's. All of them were safe, and soon even she would be happy.

Forever.


	2. They Are Legion

Because people seem to keep forgetting that X is badass. Beware The Nice Ones indeed. The more I think about it, the more apparent it is how doomed they would have been if he hadn't put his foot down about going Knight Templar. Compassion for the enemy is what makes the difference between a hero and a monster, really, which is a trope that figures a lot in the Ar Tonelico fic I need to finish...

_...If you don't know what I'm on about with the odd capital letters, go to tvtropesdotorg. Of course, that site will ruin your life..._

_Disclaimer: Tweaked characterizations aside, I own nothing. _

_On the one hand, I should feel bad, because I do tend to write people OOC in this fandom. The problem is that the games write them painfully stupid and OOC for what has been established about them too, really, so it would really only be possible to be true to that (especially with the translation and bad grammer and oy) if you were writing a parody fic. I would really appreciate it if Zero series fans (other than my beta) would let me know what they think of my versions in this fic and Elysium Regained. Especially Harpuia, keeping in mind that he just saw 'Master X' go maverick, launch missiles to destroy everything they'd worked for, blow up when Harpuia finally managed to fight through the impending 'Heroic' BSOD to fight him the way he would have wanted, then he practically had to go begging to Zero and Ciel, which would have been a blow even if Zero weren't making it clear he considered Harpuia a drama queen, and then there's the revelation. _

_Harpuia is a knight templar. Despite the whole genocide thing, he's pretty clear-cut lawful good. Zero killed Copy-X and Harpuia still saved him from the desert and dropped him off at the resistance base when someone with one iota less of an honor code or good samaritan tendencies would have done the rational thing and killed him then and there or hauled him back for a trial. The thing is, that's partially why he doesn't stop killing reploids. If people go 'it's ok to kill someone for the greater good' to justify it to themselves, and then it turns out that no, it wasn't good or necessary? He was doing all that to save humanity, and for X/Copy-X. It takes a strong person to admit that the unethical thing they had to argue themselves into doing in the first place wasn't a good deed. That they screwed up and thousands are dead because of it. Ciel is able to admit that, but she really just made one mistake. Harpuia has made years of them. Given the character archetypes he's based on, and his in-game suicidal tendencies on occassion, if he admitted to himself that all that was wrong, he'd kill himself. It's very literally keep killing reploids for humanity's sake or die. And since the mind has a survival imperative that tends to kick the ass of the death wish... _

_Oh: since X is not the sort of person to let someone be nameless, in my head the Mother Elf's original name, and what X tends to call her, is Aurora, both because I like my Sleeping Beauty in-jokes and the fact that she was the dawn of a new world, an end to the nightmare of the wars and the virus. Once upon a time, she was a hero... Her name as the dark elf is Nyx, Greek goddess of night, who recently became more known due to Persona 3. I don't know if it was Weil that actively renamed her or it's a nickname with no real attribution that people ended up using. Odd things arise from the collective unconsciousness._

* * *

"Where Zero would go to find X? We've already looked everywhere we can think of for him. Why do you ask?" Was Harpuia trying to capture his creator's cyber elf for some reason? Did he resent him?

Copy-X had every right to resent her, so maybe Harpuia felt X was at fault for leaving them all alone?

Ciel wondered if he really wanted information or a confrontation.

"Zero said that he thought X might be the new core of the virus, and that if he was then Zero would join him. Then he disappeared to investigate. That was an hour ago."

"An hour ago?" Something like that, and he'd waited this long to inform the rest of them? "An _hour _ago? Cerveau, put everything we have that isn't going to life support into tracking their signals!"

Cerveau minimized the window he had been working in. "On it…"

"Do you know any place that might have significance to them both? You were closer to him than I was." Closer to X.

Harpuia didn't look pleased by the reminder. Ciel didn't really care that she'd ruffled his feathers again. "Perhaps somewhere in Neo Arcadia. It was built where Hunter HQ used to be, because it was easier to repair the defenses, or recycle the rubble, than build from scratch."

Ciel didn't roll her eyes, even though she'd known that much.

"Got it! They're where X was sealing the Dark Elf."

"Really?" Harpuia looked over Cerveau's shoulder, then pushed him out of the way so he could get a closer look. "That location was heavily shielded, how could you possibly have gotten any signal-What signal? There's no signal there."

"Did I say anything about a signal?"

Cerveau watched as the hand Harpuia had pushed him back with and still had on his chest first tensed, then was pulled back as hurriedly as Harpuia might have if he'd belatedly realized that he was touching burning acid. He found it funny how Harpuia moved to place himself between Cerveau and Ciel, even though not only had they been enemies for years, _Ciel _wasn't the one in danger of infection. She was still a human.

Willing to risk something he considered worse than death for the sake of a human? What a fool Harpuia was. To think they'd been so afraid of him and that fake Ciel had built for so many years, until Zero had come to liberate them from him.

"So Zero did betray humanity?" Harpuia was only a hair's breadth away from attacking, but the information was vital.

"Betray humanity?" What a stupid thing to say. "If anything, Zero, I mean Lord Omega, has _stopped _betraying the only human worthy of loyalty. Although he has decided to spare you, Miss Ciel." She was a human, and being near her made his padding crawl, but it wasn't her fault she'd been born a vicious animal. X had a point, about how admirable it was to overcome that enough to fake civilization or decency. "X requested that no one move without orders, but he's currently off duty by order, and without him to restrain them, Zero's plan to force the ones without discipline to reveal themselves might start working." The unclean feeling of being around humans might drive the younger ones to get rid of their sickening presence. "So you might want to head over there."

"So you're taking orders from both X and Zero?" Ciel asked, scientific detachment and determination holding back panic.

"Our loyalty is to Lord Omega, always." He was built to take care of them, to give them Elysium, a world where they didn't have to live in fear. "X has taken care of us in his name, but now that Zero has awoken, he may assume command." Although X's operational plan was going well, it was almost over bar the strike and the clean-up. "Most would prefer Zero do so immediately. He's good, but he was built by that murderer."

"Zero was built by Dr. Wily?"

"Yes." She'd known? Or how could she have figured that out from what he'd said... "Oh, no. I meant X was built by Dr. Light."

"Dr. Wily's enemy."

"The murderer of... Well, soon that won't matter anymore. You might want to head over there."

Harpuia readied himself to strike.

"Go ahead, if you think it'll do any good. When I die, I'll only return to Lord Omega to be rebuilt." Seeing Harpuia pause, Cerveau told Ciel. "You should head over there before someone attacks you. Lord Zero has chosen to spare your life, but some people are blaming that on X corrupting him. So you should go to him before someone decides to kill you on his behalf." So that the new world wouldn't be tainted by her presence.

"He doesn't want me killed?"

Cerveau shrugged. "His will isn't for me to question. But if any human deserves to see Elysium… if any humans did, you would be one of them. And it's Lord Zero's will that you be spared, anyway. But you should hurry." He pulled up the window again. "Excuse me, I have an assignment."

"Killing humans?" Harpuia growled.

"Just Dr. Weil."

Harpuia still shot Cerveau in the head on the way out. Cerveau rolled the eyes he didn't have (for now). Yeah. Real mature.

He felt X's echo of agreement and disapproval, smiled wryly, and went back to his project now that they knew that Cerveau had passed on the message and the two of them should be on their way. There was a waiting list for bodies: the 21XX mavericks had been dead longer, so it was fair they were going first. He didn't mind, he could work on this from cyberspace just as well.

"Do you know what Ciel likes to drink, Alouette?" X asked as he poured her another cup of tea. They would be having guests soon.

"She said she wanted coffee once, but there was never any." In the resistance base.

"Well, coffee can be managed." There were no known living trees, but there were some preserved beans, and there was plenty of genetic data on file, so more trees could certainly be grown.

Alouette smiled, overjoyed that Ciel could have her favorite.

"Ah, that's good." Food appeared on the table. "We'll have to wait a bit more for the cakes, but the scones are done! Zero…" X made a surprised noise as he found himself pulled back into Zero's arms. "Zero!" The injunction to quit nuzzling at his shoulder, there were children present, was ignored.

Zero picked up a scone and held it to X's mouth.

When Zero wouldn't remove it, X let it feed it to him to get it out of the way, laughter bubbling up inside. "So that's why you suggested getting food? You've changed, Zero." He'd never approved of human food before, seen it as a waste of time.

"Mmm," he agreed, savoring the lazy content feeling. "Are you happy, X?" He wanted to hear the answer even though he knew it.

X sighed contentedly, letting out the breath slowly, leaning back against Zero. "The wars are finally over. No one's going to have to die anymore, I'm not going to have to kill anymore. You're here." After so long. "Yes, I'm happy, Zero. You don't have to do things like that to make me happy. Everyone's safe, we can spend the time to play around like this…" He reached up to touch Zero's face. "I'm happy."

He really believed that, Zero could feel it. The virus was preventing him from understanding what was going on, what he had been doing.

Then Zero scowled.

"Hmm?" What's wrong.

"Nothing." Not nothing. X had red eyes now. Like that copy. Zero did _not_ like that. X was nothing like that, that abominable _fake_ who had desecrated X's good name.

He had the virus put them back the way they had been by disassembling that red film, but the image nagged at him.

He did his best to put it from his mind. "Can we get a couch?" Alouette was delighted by the wrought-iron chairs with flowery pillows, the kind people would have in a real tea party in a real garden, but they weren't big enough to sit on with X. Well, it could be managed, but it wouldn't be comfortable.

"Whatever you wish." Zero had an army that would be happy to get it for him.

A few halls down from that room, their guests were trying to sneak up. "Quiet," Harpuia ordered Ciel, and listened, hearing the same sounds that Zero had earlier and knowing the same truth. "Both baby elves, although the sound's slightly different, another young female model…" And a sound that at first he couldn't place… and then he could.

Familiar, and… not Master X's laugh. "X."

He was a Guardian of Neo Arcadia. Probably the last one, as Fefnir hadn't responded when they tried to contact him. He was not going to say anything along the lines of, 'Fuck, we are so, _so_ screwed.'

Instead, he checked over his systems, feeling happier than he had in months. He was going to die, and he'd die trying to avenge what had been done to his Master X.

Upon his builder, yes, but his builder had abandoned them.

"If the baby elves are here, what about the dark elf?" the builder who had abandoned his Master asked.

"Here, or in a secure location. This would be the most secure place, with X guarding her personally, so she's most likely here."

"Would it be possible to run in and grab her?"

"No." How had they been unable to crush a resistance led by such a little idiot? "X is here."

"He has to have a weak point, he wasn't constructed as a war reploid. I mean android." Ciel knew the trade-offs in reploid construction. Only so much space, only so much weight….

"He was constructed not to _have _a weak point. Not having a strong point, like combat, was the cost of that, but it was worth it. He's been fighting, what, ten times as long as you've been breathing?" Harpuia whispered harshly. "He's forgotten more about strategy than he programmed me with! He built the three of us to have strong points, but that was because we were supposed to be able to cover each other's weaknesses." And Phantom had been meant to have almost no weaknesses, except the inevitable consequences of having more space taken up by combat hardware than just a buster arm.

"Not to mention that he built and trained all four of us. We may have refined our fighting styles somewhat, but he created them. I was starting to grow soft before Zero came back, and when I fought Zero he barely had any of his old skill at strategy, without his memories. He only has half X's combat experience even now. Neo Arcadia models were _built _to be no challenge. Despite Zero, I'm rusty compared to the strength I had during the ELF Wars. My only hope is to take him with me, and buy you time." It had taken six months or more for the mavericks to regroup and Sigma to return, but X was well aware of that weakness. "Maybe. Destroying his body might not work, if he can become a cyber elf again. If he even had a new body built in the first place." Sigma had, many times.

If the baby elves were there, they could infiltrate Harpuia's systems as easily as that Elpizo's, but they would need a minute to take control of him, thanks to X's precautions. The dark elf, if she had gone to X's side, wouldn't. The virus… he hadn't been taken when Leviathan tried to infect him, there was that. He must have some resistance to that as well. He should have enough time to position himself so his self-destruct would destroy both X and Zero.

"Then we should retreat for now, and try to come up with a better plan, or see if we can negotiate."

"Are you…" Well, yes, she was just that stupid, stupid enough to oppose what Master X had done when it was all for _her _and her race. "You ungrateful little… it's people like you that make reploids believe the mavericks have a point." Harpuia knew _he _wanted to strangle her. "Get out of range, unless you want to die." She was the only leader left, the only one capable of running a resistance to the power that would shortly rule Neo Arcadia. The irony burned.

There was no point in trying to sneak in. He wasn't Phantom and he'd practiced with X, he knew that much about the android's sensor capacity, so he charged through the halls.

"Harpuia!" Ciel called. That _idiot_, running after him! At least there hadn't been any element of surprise to ruin.


	3. Ties That Ensnare

_In which why Elysium Regained did_ not_ have a happy ending becomes a bit more apparent, although it'll hit in the next chapter._

* * *

X had gotten up and was already heading towards the door as Harpuia entered. When Harpuia tried to attack, he easily turned to the side, grabbed Harpuia's overextended arm, used it to pull him forward, further off balance, and in the same movement brought his mouth next to Harpuia's ear and sternly said, "Sage Harpuia Light."

The coded harmonics buried in that vocalization triggered something, and he felt his body freeze around him.

Zero stood up and walked over, wide-eyed. "A failsafe?" Some idiots had wanted to build failsafes into all hunters so that they could be shut down if they ever went maverick. "_You _put in a failsafe? You always hated those things, one maverick getting their hands on the codes meant a unit could be wiped out!"

"I was trying to replicate what my father did to make sure that no one would try to take me apart for the sake of the technology I contain. Figuring out this form of failsafe was a side effect that I left in and improved on, in case Weil was able to get his hands on any of them." X picked Harpuia up and laid him down on the couch Zero had been sitting on. "There's more to the code than the words and harmonics. I made certain that no one could activate it but me." He put his hand on Harpuia's forehead, and Harpuia felt the system diagnostic query. "You haven't energized properly in years, have you?" X sighed, sitting on the arm of the couch. "You really believed that you were doing the right thing." He'd starved himself of energy voluntarily, just like he'd helped force the reploids of Neo Arcadia to do.

"Zero?" Ciel asked slowly, carefully approaching the door after that display.

Zero nodded, acknowledging her presence.

"I'm glad you could join us, Ciel. Alouette said that you liked coffee, but she didn't know what kind or how you took it. What would you like?" X genuinely liked being the host.

"…Anything's fine." She carefully walked forward, off-balance but not disarmed.

"Zero, would you mind pulling out a chair for her?" That was only polite. "Alouette…" X looked down behind the couch and, with a gentle voice, said, "Come out now, Alouette. Ciel's here. You don't need to hide from her." Even if Alouette's recovered memories contained many people she should have hidden from.

"But…" a small voice said.

"She doesn't hate you." X looked at Ciel for support.

"Alouette?" Was that really Alouette, here? Harpuia had said so, but there was a difference between the Alouette she had taken care of and the one that had attacked her with a knife. "I don't hate you, it wasn't your fault." It was the virus', she knew Alouette would never try to hurt her.

"Ciel?" Alouette carefully looked up over the couch.

"Alouette…"

Her little girl ran to hug her, and Ciel wrapped her arms around her, almost shaking with relief. Alouette wasn't a maverick anymore, everything was going to be fine. She finally pulled Alouette back a bit to get a good look at her face, to check that she was alright, since she _had _been shot…

And froze, forcing herself not to jump back when she saw those same red eyes.

But… X's eyes hadn't been red.

"And Sage Harpuia _Light_?" Zero was saying to X. "You gave someone like that _that _name? You gave them all your family name? You didn't even give it to _Sigma!_"

"That was because Sigma was Dr. Cain's creation as much as mine, and we decided we didn't want to burden him with the name of Light, on top of being the first reploid. Harpuia and the others were built when I thought it was going to be _over_. I thought the name wouldn't force them to put themselves in danger and be heroes, not in a peaceful world. When Dr. Weil… I took the name off of their registries, but I still built them with my own hands. It _is _their name."

"Yes, and that's going to help convince people that they shouldn't be permanently destroyed for what they've done."

X's eyes closed, and he suddenly looked so very tired.

The way he had when Ciel had known him as a child, under the façade.

"Why should they be killed? No… They killed inno…" X frowned. "What?" Something was so very strange… there were things that weren't quite fitting together, and for a terrible instant he felt utterly lost.

Zero took X into his arms. "Shh, it's okay, X. No one's killing anyone unless I say so."

"Yes." That was truth.

Alouette tugged at Ciel's arm. "There's coffee, and cakes, and anything!"

"…Yes, right…" She let Alouette lead her to her seat and tried not to obviously stare at the two ancient heroes.

X's eyes were green, but there was an empty feeling to them, like the broken body of a reploid who had been terminated but not recycled yet. "Zero…"

"Forget about it, X. It's not important. I'll take care of everything."

"Alright." Those eyes closed yet again, obediently.

"They're mine now, and I won't let any of mine be killed. What happened before doesn't matter anymore."

X nodded, listening quietly.

"It was because of them, anyway, so that won't matter anymore. You'll have Elysium, X, with your-what's left of your family." Now Zero was the one who seemed pained.

"It doesn't matter, Zero," X looked up to reassure him. "Not when you're here. It doesn't matter." There was some _other_ element to those words: they were spoken not with affection but… Like he had been programmed to say those words, feel that way, regard this as truth.

There were only two things that could do that to a reploid.

Dark elves… and the virus.

"…X" Zero touched his face, frowning. Then he straightened himself. "Well, cheer up. We shouldn't act depressing, not in front of the children."

"Zero." X raised an eyebrow.

"You were the one who started bringing them up every five seconds," Zero said in his defense.

"Right." X smiled again. "Another couch?"

"Sure."

X closed his eyes for a moment, and took Zero's hand to stand up from the arm of the couch. "Let's get this one out of the way." Zero helped him push it against the wall, and X made sure that Harpuia was comfortable.

"Is your coffee getting cold? There's cream, and sugar."

"Thank you, Alouette." Ciel took them from her politely.

She'd never actually had coffee. Her great-grandmother was the one who had liked it: Ciel had always wanted to try it, but always been told 'when you're older.' It was one of those things too precious to be wasted on children, like wine. Her great-mother had been one of the Council of Neo Arcadia, and Ciel thought that she hadn't abused her rank. Yet there had always been coffee, and she'd only found out years later how impossible it was to procure.

Ciel's great-mother had been the only surviving scientist who had worked on the Dark Elf by the time Ciel was born (except Dr. Weil and X, of course), and money, power, and fame had meant most barriers didn't exist for her.

It was bitter. She hadn't expected that.

It was appropriate, though.

She stirred in cream and sugar, hoping that would change things, as a couch was teleported in. Such a casual use of energy! Zero led X over to it and sat him down on it, acting almost courtly. Had they been in love, before? Was that why Harpuia had said that Zero wouldn't fight X, not the real X?

"So," X said brightly. "It's nice to see you again, Ciel. Please don't be angry with Alouette, she insisted that she didn't want anyone else to kill you." He could talk about killing as though it was a favor? "But that doesn't need to happen now, since Zero wants you to live."

"Does this mean that…" She didn't know how to finish that sentence because she didn't even want to hazard a guess at what all of this meant. "What about everyone else?"

"Everyone's going to be fine. It's going to take awhile to make Cerveau a new body, since there are so many people waiting for one to be built, but he's keeping busy," X assured her.

Cerveau was a reploid. "And the other humans?"

There was a… pause, somehow. A flicker, before X resumed. "They'll be taken care of."

Ciel was used to Neo Arcadian doublespeak. She'd built Copy-X. She knew what that meant. "You mean you're going to have them killed."

"Yes." This time there wasn't a flicker, and Ciel remembered what Zero had told her about why X had left them.

He'd stopped caring about the people he had to kill. He'd left so that he wouldn't become… what her copy of him had.

So he wouldn't become this.

Then she'd dragged Zero into this, and X with him, and Elpizo had destroyed X's body and managed to infect him.

Or, you could also say that she'd woken up the source of the Maverick Virus before he'd finished purifying himself and then trusted Zero even after he'd told her the truth. "Zero, are you… I thought you were…" Trying to save everyone. "We've taken Neo Arcadia, there's a new energy source…" If they stopped this, everything would be over.

Just like everything had been over when the Mother Elf was made, until Dr. Weil had betrayed the world.

"And X, you're fine with this?" There had to be something still in there, or why that moment of hesitation?

"Yes, of course." He smiled. "I'll do whatever Zero wants."

"But do you want to?"

"I want to bring peace, bring Elysium so my children don't have to suffer anymore."

"Do you want to kill people?"

X paused. "I've had to kill lots of people. It was necessary."

"What if it wasn't necessary?"

"Then I wouldn't kill them."

"Is it necessary to destroy humanity?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because that's what will create the new world."

"I've already got control of Neo Arcadia, Zero gave it to me, he could take control, and if he has control of the mavericks? Humans can't fight reploids, we can't stop you from having a peaceful world."

"But you will."

"Why?" Then she realized the obvious counterargument to the notion that humans didn't do things that caused immense amounts of human and reploid suffering for selfish and short-sighted reasons. "We're not like Dr. Weil!"

"But he was. You aren't, so I'm happy that Zero's letting you live. Would you like one of those cakes? Some of them were made especially sweet so Alouette could taste them, but the others turned out quite nice." For recipes the cooks had never laid eyes on.

"So why not let everyone who isn't Dr. Weil live?"

"Then what about the next generation?"

"You could just not let people like him get any power!"

"That would be eternal strife. Eternal fear." He looked over the table without seeing any of the delicacies: Ciel had never seen a cake that wasn't a birthday cake. "I'm tired of that. Zero would protect us, I know that he wouldn't mind, but I'm tired of Zero sacrificing himself. But how is it different? Humans are not people, but Dr. Cain, and Zero's father, and…" Another little flicker. "It is the will of the virus, Zero's will, that all the humans not personally vouched for and guarded by reploids will be killed."

"But what if it wasn't? Would you still want us dead?"

"No." X seemed even more confused by how simple it had been to answer that question. "I… am tired of death. I was always tired of death, from the first day I woke up." And found that all of his family was dead.

"Do you wish that it wasn't the will of the virus?" She leaned forward.

"Yes." That word was quiet. "But I am… I should not… I must not defy the virus." That sentence was firmer, with that same sense that there was something besides X that was speaking. "I am the last child of Light, son of a murderer and brother to traitors to their kind, and owe my life to Omega's mercy." Then his voice softened. "Zero's kindness."


	4. A Serpent's Tooth

_X is not well in Zero series. Luckily he's just very, very good at functioning despite anguish. The virus is something that took advantage of that to mess with his head: of course it's not actually helping any. If it actually fixed his mental state, there goes the hole in his security. If anything, it's made things much worse. Often pain is a good thing when you're injured, because it means that the nerves are still working. It's possible to regain use of the limb or whatever._

_All anesthetics are pretty nasty. Over the counter pain meds are actually just basically prevent swelling, and opiates actually cause pleasure so the brain doesn't care about the pain… it's a lot easier to mess with our pleasure system than our pain system, because pain is more important. It keeps people alive. _

_Unless you experience enough that your body decides you're maladapted and starts actively trying to kill you, but I seriously doubt reploids have that adaptation. And thank goodness, because what X goes through for centuries, some of it _alone_, is just excessive. It would depress anyone, so he's very, very lucky that he can't get clinical depression._

_Likening the Maverick Virus to a zombie apocalypse where the zombies can think and plan is a fairly good metaphor. It was also meant to, among other things, kill X._

* * *

"X?" Zero touched his hair, worried.

"Zero?" X sounded lost again, and small. "Am I your enemy?" He didn't want to be.

"Never." That had always been true.

"That's… good." He leaned against Zero again. "What do you want me to do?"

"Be happy." Zero touched him carefully, as though he was a porcelain doll that had been shattered, then pieced back together, and the glue didn't seem to be holding. "Be at peace. Don't worry. I'll take care of you, I'll take care of everything now."

"But I like taking care of people." But not in the sense of killing them. "Your will, and the virus' will… I tried to update it, when it configured within me, but it's not in tune with your will anymore. It's… confusing everyone." Especially X. "It took my personality data and skills, to make them stronger, but it wouldn't listen to me about anything else. It would have shattered me, except I was strong enough to not be broken accidently, and… It was still you. An old you, but you. It's part of you again now, isn't it?"

"Yes, thanks to you." He pushed X's helmet (or did it only count as a hat?) up a bit. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

X shook his head. "I missed you. It felt like you, because it was you. So I couldn't fight it, and it didn't hurt me." Much. "It made me belong to you, but that's how things should be. I don't want to be your enemy, and you exist to make a place for our race to live in peace. We should all be your loyal subjects. You deserve it, not like Dr. Weil," he told Zero.

"You. You should rule."

X's eyes widened, suddenly flashing red.

"Cancel that!" Zero quickly yelled, grabbing X, who went limp.

"I must not defy you, I must not fight you, I must not place myself above you…" That was the virus speaking through him again. "Zero, I'm sorry, I keep thinking things, and they're against your will. I'm so sorry."

"The virus... I would _never _want you to be hurt."

"Do you want me dead?"

"Never!"

"The virus thinks that I'm worse than a human. Zero, I… I don't want you to think that of me." That I would be your enemy. That I am something that needs to be destroyed.

"I'll change it," Zero promised. "Right now."

"Thank you," X said quietly, drawing his legs up under him to kneel. "The virus split off a piece of me, and I know that's your will, and I don't mind, but when something comes up and I try to think with that piece of me, it… feels as though…"

"I'd never hate you." Zero seemed almost sick. "I wouldn't want you to feel like that. I don't want you to hurt, that's why I… I don't want to put it back, not yet. But you'll get it back, you're strong like that, and I don't want you to hurt then, either." For the people he'd already had Copy-X bomb into oblivion, for the wreckage of the city he'd built for the refugees.

"People expect me to ask you to spare the humans. Except for the ones that only know me through what the copy did. I don't want to kill reploids, I don't think I ever did."

"You don't even know _that_?"

"It's… that part of myself." That was being held out of his reach. "Was I a monster?"

"No. Never!"

"Then… I know that you want to make me happy, but right now I don't know what would. So please, follow your judgment over mine." His hand reached out to entangle his fingers with Zero's. "That is how it should always be, of course, Lord Omega, but… I don't know myself right now." It hurt to think about these things, and yet he had to, for Zero's sake. "I know that you don't want me to call you that, but the virus says that it is your will, and…" X was already torn to pieces.

Zero pulled the other, his partner, to him. "I'll fix this. But there won't be any more killing, not by you or the others. If someone needs to be killed, I'll take care of it. That was the intent. I was supposed to fix things before you woke up, so that none of our kind had to… Just me." Only his hands, only those of the red demon. Not X, never X. "What would you want? If I didn't want anything, what would you want?"

"Without you, and the virus? I can't imagine that." Not anymore. "I don't want to. Without you, I… I became like this." Falling apart, until he'd fallen into the virus' grasp.

"If I was neutral on how Elysium was created. On if there were humans there or not. What would you want?"

Ciel tried not to look like she was congratulating herself. Zero was doing this for X, so once X had started showing cracks…

"…I don't want any more wars. So they should be killed so that can be assured."

…Dammit. It would not be a good idea to interrupt now: she'd have to see how this played out and wait for another moment.

"Alright." Zero didn't seem happy with that, though.

"Except I don't know what I want, I just told …sorry." That was perilously close to defiance, to insulting his master.

"You, when you were whole, you wouldn't have wanted them to die. So I'll give you that." Zero stroked his back. "The bombs that fell were my fault, all of them. For not taking control before, for not protecting you. I'll _make _you believe that, so you don't have to hurt."

"You can't make me hate you!" A flash of fury there, before those eyes flashed red again.

"I won't, I won't. Hush, X," Zero repeated.

"I _want_ to be with you, I know that. I'd want it even if it weren't your will. I wanted it before, that's in the core of me, not the missing pieces, not where you're holding me. I know that you want that too." No, he would not hush, not about this.

The body the virus had allowed him might not have any armor or weapons, but he would fight, even Zero. And the virus would _let _him, if it was for Zero's sake. He would not suffer the years that had reduced him, never again. "You are the protector of all of us, it's greedy of me, but…"

"I know." Zero patted him on the back. "Aurora?"

"…Yes?" The entire time, there had been a young female reploid sitting in a corner of the room (back to the wall, where it was defensible, so she could feel safe).

"Help me." He reached out his hand to her. "This isn't quite what you were made for, but I need your help for this. Destroying humanity is at the core, and it's hard to hack myself."

She hesitated, pulling back a little, then leaning forward and finally getting to her feet. "Yes. I'll help you, Father." Her eyes hardened, full of purpose, and Ciel finally saw the resemblance, finally realized who this was.

The Dark Elf, who had been the Mother Elf. The dawn of a new hope for this world. The virus' bane.

She came close only to sit down again, and it seemed as though she would remain like X, kneeling almost in prayer, until wings sprouted from her back and the familiar form of the Mother Elf burst from that body like a moth from a cocoon.

Zero touched her form, seeming gentle. "Be careful. I've shut down my defenses, but the stuff it's made from… Well, you already know what that's like." From curing the virus. "Try to take care of anything that you think should be changed, but if you get tired, I'll finish up, alright? Don't push yourself."

She bobbed in midair, in what was clearly a nod.

Then plunged into Zero's body. There was something unnerving about the suddenness of the movement, like a snake striking.

Then Zero's body shut down, motors no longer working to keep it upright and X _screamed_, lunging forward to catch him. "Why!" Zero's body blocked Ciel's view of the Mother Elf entering X, but the _flinch_ telegraphed what happened. "Stop… That's, that's all that's left… I _won't let you_." His voice changed, no longer pleading but stern and _furious_, as Ciel noticed the first tear falling.

The Dark Elf removed herself from him hesitantly, then drew back from his glare. If looks could kill… And X had never been one for threats, only certainties.

She retreated back to the safety of the body he had given her: or was she hiding, even though that reploid shell met X's eyes bravely? That wasn't her real form, after all. She certainly could speak in Elf form, if her daughters could, and yet she was hiding inside a puppet."He's dead! He's dead, Father, it's over. It's over, like it should have been! Before Dr. Weil stole me and…" The tightening around her eyes spoke of pain and guilt. "It's over, we can have peace now. Let me cure you too! Why won't you let me, you said the only reason you wouldn't let me before was because of _him_. I know you love him, but he's the cause of all this, just like the Elf Wars were because of me! If he were really your friend, he wouldn't have wanted to make you live with killing all those people! He would have hated doing this to you, the way I did." The way she'd hated driving all those innocent reploids mad at Weil's command.

"It's all that's left," he told her quietly. "The virus is all that's left of him. And you're too young to understand that love is a powerful force, not a kind one, even though it can inspire kindness. I refused to let you destroy yourself after the Elf Wars because I loved you, even though I knew how much you were suffering. Zero refused when I asked him to kill me if I ever became a maverick, long before you were made, because he loved me, even though he knew how much I was suffering and that he could relieve some of that worry by promising. I knew exactly what would happen when I gave him his old body back and let him remember. I knew that would make it impossible for him to fight me, crushed by the weight of those memories. How_ dare_ you imply he didn't care about me. You know _nothing_. I'm the one that trapped him in this scenario. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it, I gave in to the virus instead of fighting it, because I love him. Perhaps I could have fought the virus if all it did was whisper of an easy peace, but I'll never know. I couldn't fight Zero. I could never fight Zero, and he could never fight me. That is _why you exist_. The _only_ reason the Maverick Virus didn't win long before you were made."

"Just let me cure you, Father! Wouldn't he have wanted that?"

X nodded, only a slight movement as he held her gaze. "Yes. Even though the virus gave him everything, he wanted to have it changed, not the maverick virus any longer, for my sake. He was always willing to die for my sake. I know what he would have wanted. And _I don't care_. Because I love him too, you see, and if he is dead, then there is nothing to do but fight, one last time, so that our children can have peace. And then I will join him." The cracks that Ciel's questions and Zero's concern had maneuvered him into showing were gone, now. This was the X who did not care, not at all, how many he had to kill for peace. The one for who even the virus was one more weapon, and a precious one at that.

"Don't! Wouldn't he want you to live?"

"Yes. He wanted me to live a long and peaceful life, but I don't want to live without him. If our positions were reversed, if I had died before he did, I know he would have done the exact same thing. I tried, I tried until it broke me, but I cannot live without him." Even when X knew that Zero was just sleeping, eventually even that hadn't been enough. "And that was why he couldn't cure me: because that would make me feel pain again and he could not allow that." That had been part of the trap he had set as the virus willed, to recapture its avatar. "How dare you imply that you're better than him, when you can't even kill me."

She flinched, caught. "I'm your father, the one who protected you and thought of you when no one else did. You said yourself that if I were myself, I would have begged you to kill me before I ordered my copy to bomb Neo Arcadia, and yet you just sat there and watched, because my happiness and safety mattered more to you than my wishes, your duty, and the lives of thousands of people. You are just as much his daughter, the virus' replica, as you are my creation. How dare you sit there, in the body you only have because of the virus, with the freedom you only have because we liberated you from Dr. Weil, and claim that you were doing the right thing by betraying both of us. How dare you."

That wasn't a question, not even a rhetorical one. There _was _no excuse. "Not only that, you didn't even change the virus first. The mavericks will still be forced to follow his outdated priority list. Without him to rein them in, all humans will die, even the ones he had already granted safety to. The Elf Wars were not your fault. What happens now will be." He turned his back on her.

"I can stop the virus, that was what I was built for!"

He walked towards the door. "No. You can't. Do you _really_ think that the virus would have let a threat to itself exist, once it had control of me, once it had my mind to strategize for it? It was only possible to build you because Lumine had killed Sigma and there wasn't intelligent opposition watching for a project like you, striking often enough to make it impossible for Zero to be sealed away instead of out in the field. There are only three of you, and those you cure can be reinfected. Because you are my daughter, because I didn't want to have to kill you, I made very, very sure that there was nothing you could possibly do to stop the virus' victory. Except I didn't think of this. I didn't think that you would stab us in the back and destroy all hope. Perhaps you take more after Dr. Weil than either of us, in the end." That was a terribly, terribly cruel thing to say, but why should he care if he hurt her when he wouldn't hesitate to kill her if it became necessary?

She scrambled to her feet, and Ciel, for the first time, registered the thinness of her wrists. Not only wasn't she wearing armor, she couldn't possibly have even a buster. "Stop, stop it!" How could he say that, how could he say she was like that monster? She had to wipe her eyes with her wrist.

"I'm not going to leave, Aurora. I'm just going to reactivate the defense system here. Alouette isn't going to hurt Ciel, and your brother is almost your age, almost old enough to be immune if it weren't for his character flaws." Harpuia was already willing to commit genocide, so it hadn't taken the virus much work to sway him once it had a real foothold. "I infected him, but he should have enough control to refrain from killing her, as much as he wants to. Zero wanted Ciel to live. We will just have to see how long I can manage that for."

"You're going to protect her?" Aurora faltered. Her, not me?

"Yes. Zero cared about her. Just like you, and I, and your daughters. Speaking of which, Aurora." He turned to her. "You have fifteen seconds to get out there and start trying to cure the mavericks faster than they can kill humans, or admit to yourself that this was never about them or the world and stay here."

She shook her head. "I can't leave, not when they'll kill you to get to her."

"Exactly. This was never about the world, Aurora. Not the virus, either. This is happening because you love me and you were jealous. For all those years, I was your protector. It was just the two of us. Then Zero returns, and I leave you alone for weeks at a time. In the end, I even failed to protect you from one of Zero's allies. Am I wrong?"

"But…" That was just a quiet little whimper, not even a denial. But he was her father, but he had promised?

"That doesn't make it right, Aurora." He put his hand on the panel and Ciel could _see _the virus flowing out of him into it, energizing drained defense systems and _twisting_ this space, taking it out of the normal realm. Cyberspace. "Lockdown."

Aurora gasped with shock as her earrings glowed, energy washing over her skin. "What did you do?" She, she was trapped inside this body? _Father _had trapped her?

"As I said. The virus wouldn't let me spare you unless I made sure you were harmless. Well, mostly harmless, anyway_." _He turned to look at her, smiling ruefully. Then he looked at Ciel. "This is why you could never find me, and why no one could find the dark elf, either, even though this isn't too far from my old lab. When I sealed her away, I sealed this room within Cyberspace. The problem was, that took energy to maintain, and when your fake cut power to this sector, eventually it returned to normal space." Purple-black energy flared along the walls, tracing out strange patterns.

The phrase 'alien geometries,' came to Ciel's mind. As did her concealed weapons. Zero knew that she had them, and the fact he hadn't even _bothered _disarming her would have told her that they weren't going to be any help even if she hadn't been smart enough to figure that out for herself. Even if she had been able to blow X up, doing so would have been _incredibly_ stupid. Sure, blowing up Sigma had bought six months in the past, but X would just become a cyber elf. She wouldn't have been able to do anything to any of them but potentially anger them (Zero normally approved of the fact she wasn't helpless, but she was certain that wouldn't extend to harming X), and X was the key to everything. Seeing him so distressed had proven to Zero that this wasn't the answer, she'd known Zero well enough to know that. X, though? It sounded like he didn't even have the power to spare humanity even if she did convince him, now that Zero was gone. Still, there had to be _some _way…

"The virus is naturally attuned to this space. This is where destroyed mavericks go, to wait to be revived, and I was able to grant that ability to some of the reploids I designed even before I could use the virus."

"Heh. I'm really glad you aren't my enemy."

* * *

_Creating a character for the Dark Elf is a bit difficult. It's easy to justify why she'd be silent in the game series. Going from the hero that finally cured the virus and saved the world to what Weil used her for was probably quite traumatic, and then X got killed, with her there, because of her. According to Capcom, Zero said that he felt that he knew her because she was made from him/what was inside him and felt akin to him. _

_A few things I keep in mind when writing her:_

_1. She was the one that saved the world, the tool Weil used to damn it and in the current series she's the ultimate power-up and everyone wants her. Her daughters, the dark elves, act like spoiled brats in the game series, and while Weil probably did a good job of beating any haughtyness or self-worth, even, out of her, she's going to have a belief that she's important because she is. A lack of self-esteem is just as bad a character trait as someone thinking that the world evolves around them, especially when it sort of _does_, like Luke in Tales of the Abyss. Walking WMDs need to take care of themselves, it keeps the body count down._

_2. While in the series, she's a traumatized and passive character, if she were ever to be active and try to accomplish goals, her role models are X (at the time when he was no longer reluctant to kill people), Zero (never really was reluctant to, in general), and _Weil_. While she's probably not as selfish as her children (kids don't know any better), ruthless and not knowing where the Moral Event Horizon is are givens (and she probably already thinks she's irredeemably tainted/evil because of what Weil used her for). That's how she thinks that it works, most likely, like someone who was bullied not knowing how to tease without it being cruel because in their experience, teasing equals cruel comments._

_3. Aside from that, though, she's certainly not a bad person. A bad person would not have saved Elpizo by turning him into a cyber elf after he killed the person who kept her safe, destroyed her safe haven and used her power. _

_4. Traumatized and generally passive: that's worth saying again. Not likely to speak unless spoken to, or for a purpose. Weil almost certainly did his best to beat/program any thoughts of rebellion out of her, and while programming can be fixed... On the other hand, the first step on any road to recovery would be believing that what he did to her was wrong and she didn't deserve it, and at that point a whole ton of anger would be coming out to play. Giving that rage a target? Oh boy. _

_5. She was made from Zero. Is responsible for the Elf Wars instead of the virus, but same deal, too. Similar genes/programming plus similarities in upbringing and circumstance. Then there's the whole imprinting on X thing, and look how X's other kids in Zero era turned out, the ones who were around when he was trying not to be psycho._

_6. She may or may not feel any attachment to the Baby Elves whatsoever. They were created by Weil. They may have ended up getting rescued along with her (the baby elves mention a few things about how Zero treated her and such), but they were made by Weil, from her, to spread madness. Letting them be near her may be a combination of her tendency to acts of kindness (Elpizo) and general guilt, but they were born as a consequence of Weil kidnapping and mind raping her: they're floating reminders of that. Children she didn't want and _Weil's _kids at that. If Weil was on the team that made her, given that maker tends to mean parent in this series, and they would have thought that he was a good guy who helped save the world until he showed his true colors? _Oh _boy. We're essentially talking kids that resulted from what an abusive father did to his daughter. Squicky, even for Weil. They love their mommy and want to be close to her, but she may want them to go away because they make her skin crawl and be putting up with it out of guilt-induced masochism, which is why X managed to find a way to distract them from her in this fic._

_X's description of her and her motivations in this chapter is sort of like _Crash and Burn_, in that he's deliberately being brutal, but in C&B he was saying those things for a purpose and trying to avoid being inaccurate or cruel. In this, he is mainly being a bastard and using the worst possible interpretation for everything. She's not the kind of person he paints her as, but he's saying things that she'll believe, and she does, because she believes that she's scum at this point. The virus tends to turn people into evil versions of themselves, after all, and wounds from sticks and stones can be repaired. Words aren't that easy. People that know how to help also know how to hurt. Of course, the alternative is killing her for what she did, and this is an X who lost that reluctance to kill. The fact that he's not really shows that he doesn't really think that way about her. I thought it might be a good idea to point that out since I'm mainly using viewpoints in his fic, and in canon, X was the only one to mention that the Dark Elf was once a hero/good person instead of feared and hated, and in this fic he's not making that same effort to be fair to people/clear their names/be a nice guy. _


	5. Nor Live As We Know Life

_And finally we start heading towards something really happy endingish. Why do my muses demand I write things like this sometimes? I swear, I have no control over what I write anymore, I end up forced into ridiculous oneshots when I should be doing NaNo... This entire fic is a combination of cheesy and melancholy. Not surprised it's not no reviews, really. Perhaps I should take it down? Does anyone want to actually read the rest of it?_

* * *

Ciel saw X's eyes widen with incredulous joy. "Zero!" Once again he dived for him, holding that body tight. This time Zero pulled himself up & pulled X close, X falling into his arms instead of the other way around.

"It took me awhile to find this place. It would have taken me longer if you hadn't come here, where it's easier to sense you. You _are _really good at reverse engineering. Not on my father's level when it comes to creating, but then who is?" Zero held X tightly to him. "Of course, you had a lot of time to practice. Aurora. You tried to cure the virus within me while I was sealed, remember? I'm not some ordinary infected reploid. Hell, I'm not even an android. Trying to kill me in a single body, even though you wiped out everything in that body, was as futile as trying to kill Sigma in the real world." When Lumine had killed him, he'd done it here.

X tapped Zero's helmet to get his attention. "I would have known if _that_ was all it was. I really, _everyone _really thought you were dead."

"Well, if I were a reploid, I would have been. They need the virus' web to survive here. Elves don't, and you don't since you have that function, but she completely disrupted my energy pattern, which would have killed an Elf, too. I just lost my place. She 'killed me' very thoroughly, even though it didn't do any good. I think she takes after her uncle Forte more than either of us, really. No one's come that close to killing me since him and Shadowman, and _they _knew what they were dealing with."

"You… even your elf form isn't your real body?" Aurora had thought he was something like a Dark Elf, like her, only more advanced. She was based on him, after all. She'd been able to manage something like the virus, or Dr. Weil had been able to use her to reach out to lots of reploids in a similar way.

"No." Zero smirked at her. "Or maybe I should say yes, but there's more to it than that. And if you think I'm going to tell you how to kill me, you have another think coming, young lady. I'm a Wilybot too, you know."

"I'm not a…"

"Look, the only reason I'm not killing you for that is because you're family. I'd shut it if I were you," Zero warned, looking whimsical as he stroked X's hair. "Now I'm going to need to hack myself, too, and that's like performing surgery on myself while looking in a mirror." Altering settings and sending commands was one thing, but overcoming the protections on his most central files without breaking anything important or permanently damaging his self-protection systems? Ugh. "Actually, now that I think about it, it _would _be easier to hack the virus' pattern from outside, wouldn't it? Would you mind staying here until I'm done? That way I can just look for you if I break anything and lose my place again."

This time, it was X that took Zero's face in his hands and kissed him, hard. "Anything, just come back to me." I can't live without you, you should know that by now.

Zero took X's chin in his hand and looked in his eyes. "I should take the virus out of you now. It'll be harder once I change it." If he did it now, he could tell himself that it was hurting X. If he waited, he wouldn't have that to motivate him to pull out of X's mind despite how much he wanted to stay.

"…You shouldn't. I want to stay yours, I need to stay yours. I don't want to be your enemy."

"That's the virus talking, X. You know that you'd never be my enemy." Zero kissed him again, forcing X's mouth open and pulling the virus out of him, trying to do it in a rush so X wouldn't have time to plead for him to linger, so he wouldn't lose to the temptation to linger there.

When it was done, X leaned against Zero's chest, listening to his system noise, trying to tell himself that Zero was still there, still alive.

"Are you ok?"

"I don't blame myself for the missiles, if that's what you're asking. I know very well that a maverick's actions aren't their fault." Before, he would have said that they were the virus' fault, but now that Zero was the virus once again that wouldn't be right.

"Yeah, but you're you. I thought you'd blame yourself for being weak enough to be taken, or something."

X shook his head. "Zero… I already knew that I was that weak. That was why I stopped fighting. I pushed myself until I broke, and I… couldn't blame myself for breaking. It was too much. At least I had the self-control to stop fighting, to find something else to do until I… Until you returned," X admitted. He'd known that he wouldn't be able to handle it, not again, not without Zero there. "I knew that I had lost touch with the part of me that kept me from becoming a killer. I did everything I could to stop myself from going down that path, but I knew I was vulnerable. I didn't make the connection with my immunity until afterwards, though." After it was too late.

"I'll be back soon, ok?" Zero promised. At X's nod, he nodded. "Here goes." His body leaned back against the couch, X leaning against him.

X's eyes were closed, his attention focused on the quiet sounds coming from Zero's body, listening to his equivalent of a human's heartbeat. They knew that if they spoke to him, he wouldn't answer: it would be beyond rude, it would be cruel to disrupt this vigil.

Aurora quietly moved back and sat down behind the couch, like Alouette had. Ashamed and hiding. Her daughters went to her. Alouette sniffled, relieved. "Is Zero going to be okay?" she whispered.

"I hope so, Alouette," Ciel whispered back, patting Alouette's shoulder. "Why don't you eat your cakes?" So she had something else to think about. And because they were cakes, made just for her, and Ciel had never been able to do things like that for her. Alouette deserved things like this, a chance to be a little girl that no one really had anymore, not in this world. Ciel had still wanted to give it to her. Maybe, maybe if there really was peace, then Alouette could have a proper childhood, instead of one spent hiding and starving? Better late than never?

"Okay, Ms. Ciel."

The baby elves had never really had the longest attention spans in the world. They were the first to break the silence, returning to investigating their rubber balls, as Ciel tried to pour tea and realized the difference between pretend tea and a real teapot, the heat and heft of it. She ended up spilling a little, which _mortified _her. This was a real tablecloth, the fabric wasn't even synthetic and she'd read in a book that tea stained!

X ignored all of it: it almost didn't seem like he _could_ be disturbed by it, too focused on the one thing that made life worth living for the sounds of that life to intrude.

It wasn't Alouette's eyes returning to their original color that told Ciel that the virus had been changed. It was the way those eyes teared up again and Alouette wailed.

Ciel was already on the other side of the table, hugging Alouette and saying it was ok, she didn't blame her at all, when Zero opened his eyes.

"Welcome back." X had heard the change when Zero returned, systems that had been in sleep mode revving up to handle balance, movement, high-level emulation… and, apparently, pulling X up to tuck his head on Zero's shoulder. "How is everyone?"

"I didn't cure them, I just changed the virus. Without it, they don't have backups, and we still need to work on getting the dead people decent bodies."

There were lots and lots of dead people.

"That leaves me as the de facto ruler of Neo Arcadia, though." Zero didn't know if he liked the idea, now that he was thinking a little more clearly.

"Not it." A childish thing to say, X knew, but _no_. Just _no._ He was _not _going to get stuck running this city again, not with all the memories of last time. And the memories people had of his copy's reign.

"Of course not, I need you trying to figure out how to get everyone decent bodies. Plus incorporating your virus-less backup technology."

"They were generally happy to have the virus. I don't think it was just that it was warping their thoughts. I don't think most of them will want to be cured."

Zero grimaced. "You're right, but it's not right to-"

"The young want someone they can go to with their problems. For too long, no one in power has _cared_ about them. You're a hero, and they'll trust you, even after the virus. Especially after the virus. You had that much power, and you gave them back their free will. The fact you're worried about taking it away shows that they can trust you. There's been nothing in this world worth trusting for far too long."

"I'm not a hero."

"You are." X wasn't going to hear otherwise. "More than I am. Especially now. They need a symbol. Something to believe in."

"I showed them that you're…" Not like Copy-X. Not at all.

"I left them. You came to them."

"Only because I left earlier."

"Even so." X wrapped his arm around Zero. "I am so glad you're back. So, so glad."

"You were trying to protect everyone by yourself." Of course it had been hard. "I'm here now."

"Yes, yes you are. I should… I should regret all of this, but I can't regret having you back." His Zero, who remembered him.

"…Do you mind if I infect you again?" Zero knew that he shouldn't, but it wasn't just a matter of wanting to feel X. People did not know quite how to feel about him, and it was going to be hard enough to keep people from demanding the deaths of Copy-X, Harpuia and now the Dark Elf, for what they had done. There were people who still blamed X for things that were definitely not his fault, and if he weren't in the web, they might feel that it was because he was… different, dangerous… People shouldn't be afraid of X. Well, not unless they were contemplating hurting someone X cared about, in which case they should be _very _afraid.

"I want you back," X said simply, and smiled as the virus instantly flooded into his systems.

Because how could Zero say no to that?

"Oh." X was surprised. "That's much better." Still Zero's aura, and welcome for that alone, but it wasn't tearing at him any longer, trying to encircle, bind and chain him. Pricking at the things it didn't like, trying to use the pleasure/pain system (and for him, mainly pain) as well as reprogramming to reshape him. Instead, it was just _there_, a link to countless others even if he didn't have the ability to command them anymore.

Just Zero's strong presence, the knowledge that he wasn't alone and more self-repair nanites, which X didn't really need but the Neo Arcadian reploids could use, poor things. "Oh, tell me you didn't. I spent _weeks _setting those up." Zero had wiped the virus of almost everything, including the templates X had made up of easily-implemented low-energy upgrades. "Hold on, I should have copies in my personal memory banks. Or will they work with the current virus?" Which was doing a lot less interfering in people's systems: theoretically a good thing, except that would decrease its ability to do _beneficial _interfering. "I'll put these up again for now and see if anyone has problems with them." Since Zero didn't want X to spend the next few days completely rewriting them.

"You spent weeks on medical stuff instead of killing?" Why was Zero surprised?

"Well, an army that can't fight at full strength for more than a half-hour without starting to break down isn't a very effective one."

"…Point."

"Most of it was things like that," X recalled. "By infecting reploids at the places they were taken to be destroyed, I could make sure that they lived on: that was the absolute first step, to stop those deaths." Not so much first step in a plan, but highest priority.

"And no one noticed anything, the way they would have if you'd attacked those places." Zero nodded, stroking X's hair. "So they didn't switch to other locations. And the… overt action made me think that I was dealing with someone who thought they were clever, not someone who would really be subtle."

"I should be so much more horrified by what I did, now that I can think about it clearly." The fact that he wasn't breaking down, even with Zero here, was an inescapable sign that he was still _broken_. "You can't give me any real power, Zero. I'm serious."

"You had to survive so that other people could survive. So you… No. It wasn't like gnawing a leg off to escape a trap. You were _broken_ and yet you still kept going. If only I could have been there. You're wrong, though. You still care about other people."

"I…"

"Caring is hard," Zero said simply, eyes shadowed. "It hurts, I know. I'm the one that was Colonel's friend." And Iris' boyfriend. "They couldn't endure it long enough to be activated, let alone fight the way you have. It broke them into two people." The way X was broken, although X's situation wasn't as severe. He didn't actually have a split personality the way they had.

X simply hadn't been able to pick that part of himself back up, not and carry on. When he'd faced the fact that he'd lost that part of him, and needed it? That was when he'd realized that he could no longer fight for Neo Arcadia.

"You know that it will hurt and you're still _trying _to care." How did he explain this? "I don't, most of the time. You know that. It's not worth it." Not when they die so easily and so often.

Not when they go out of their way to break your heart.

"They are…" He stopped when Zero covered his mouth with his hand.

"_You _are," he insisted, and kissed X.


	6. Perchance to Dream

_While I'm discussing the Mother/Dark Elf:_

_Her real name is almost certainly Elpis. That was the name of the project that produced her: Elpizo is named after that project. It's a Greek female name meaning hope: it fits in with Sigma and Omega being Greek letters and is an incredibly appropriate name for the world's last, best hope for peace (Babylon 5 FTW)._

_…And I just really don't like the way it sounds. 'Aurora' for the Greek goddess of the dawn is much less silly and allows me to continue the Sleeping Beauty reference running joke I have (since she was sealed away with X this time)._

_Luckily, in the Megaman X universe, most people probably do have two names, they just fall prey to the common video game trope of only using one. For instance, the various maverick bosses. X is also Dr. Light's son and then there's Dr. Cain's personal creations, like Sigma, Iris, Colonel, Signas…_

_So 'Aurora Elpis' meaning Dawn of Hope works well. Incredibly well, in fact, since the last name of the bosses tends to refer to apparent species in a rough sort of way, and Aurora is not only the first of a new species (or technically umpteenth, since they obviously reverse engineered her from Zero and the Nightmares in X6, and then there's the question of the Light capsules, but at the minimum she is to Zero what a reploid is to X), but Elpis sounds roughly like Elf._

_X was likely the one to care about the fact that she should have an individual name instead of just being named for the project (be a person as well as a symbol/hero), so he may have been the one to name her Aurora. (Just calling her Elpis/Elf might be like calling X just Android. Or Andy.)_

_And then she went from the world's hope to the world's nightmare, so a bit of 'I don't deserve that name anymore' may be why X doesn't use it in the game._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman, Zero or otherwise, or any related properties. No infringement intended or money made._

* * *

Back when Zero had awoken, sleep was something reploids did as-needed. It was boring just lying there in a recharge capsule, so that was a good time. People did need to spend a few hours a day on basic internal maintenance, and it was easier to do that when the systems weren't busy, but reploids tended to feel that they had better things to do with their time. The amount they needed depended on the quality of their systems, since builders took feedback from reploids and reploids wanted to be doing stuff, but the ideal was the minimum. The idea of lying around a human's six or seven hours, more than a fourth of the day, was ridiculous.

Actually, that was when Zero had woken up the second time. When he'd woken up the first time, he'd been dealing with robot masters, who were only put into sleep mode when humans wanted to put them in _storage_. They might reboot when they'd figured out some advantageous changes to make to their programming that couldn't be done while awake, but that took at most a couple minutes. Deep meditation when they had something taking up a lot of processing power, too much for them to do other things at the same time didn't really count, even if Dr. Light had bought actual pyjamas for Rock to wear while he was recovering from the latest war and the logic bomb that was violence.

So Omega had gone three days without sleeping since he couldn't let them outmaneuver him while he was unconscious. They'd done enough of that as it was. He had large enough systems, and varied enough systems, that he could just switch over to another drive while doing maintenance on the first. Sure, it meant a lot of defragmenting, but _that _wasn't a big deal.

After the virus had woken up along with Zero, Hunters had tried to cut sleep to the minimum since they didn't want to be infected during it. A lot of people got really paranoid, and going without sleep didn't help with that. It was damned if you do, damned if you don't, just like so much else in a hunter's life. Obviously no one liked it.

Neo Arcadian reploids slept a _lot_. It conserved energy, for one thing, and they were only given so much energy. People who were told to do a task and didn't have enough energy left for it, well, everyone knew what happened to them.

While you were sleeping, defragmenting produced the same sort of 'dreams' that it gave humans, and since reploids could control their own minds? It was the only world they had where they _didn't _have to live in fear. There was generally a room in factories where they were all supposed to go when they slept, which they didn't mind. There was company, you could try to hide communication (about things like how to escape) in the press of bodies, and it was a relief to go there and see that your friends were still alive, if you weren't working in the same area.

Until the day that they weren't there.

Until then, people slept tangled up in each other by preference, so the ones they clung to couldn't be taken away without it waking them up. If they were taken during the workday, generally there was no chance to say goodbye.

Dreams and the Resistance were the only refuges any of them had.

X had spent a hundred years in dreams. Well, ethical simulations, but that just meant high-level emulation of complicated scenarios, which took up a lot of processing power and attention when he was running virtual realities and projections on his own systems like a robot master. He also had been fine-tuning his systems that whole time, which took a lot of attention.

X didn't view sleep as a waste of time: he did his best thinking while he was asleep and didn't have to divide his focus to take in external input.

That was why he'd been awake almost all the time he'd spent with Aurora, not just to keep her company. The people he'd lost, the ones he'd killed and the ones he'd had to leave behind for their safety and his sanity didn't bear thinking about.

When Aurora had crept back to find him and found him infected, she'd curled up in his systems and the electrical field around his body the way she had before, and she'd thought the way he was always thinking, always focused, even as his body just lay there was creepy, an effect of the virus. He'd wake up when she felt too lonely to acknowledge her, pat her on the head she didn't have, but he had been too busy to tell her stories or, or anything.

He hadn't been angry that she'd kept distracting him from solving technical problems and strategizing how best to kill the people he'd once protected, but she'd known that was the real reason he'd made her and her daughters bodies. Crea and Prea had been happy to run around after discovering that there were these things called balls that were repelled when their electric fields came in contact with the electric fields of other so-called solid matter in a way that was called 'bouncing,' but she'd wanted to stay with the only person had ever done things for her instead of just wanting things of her.

X didn't want anything of her now, except to be safe and happy, and she'd loved that, a secret guilty pleasure that fought with the lonely jealous part of her that wanted him to give her all of his attention again and the part of her that knew what she was for.

Aurora had been made from Zero to save the world. Like him, she didn't consider herself a hero, even though she _had _saved it for a few precious years. Not after what Dr. Weil had forced her to do to the people she'd meant to save.

Still, she'd been built because the virus needed to be fought, and there she'd been, not fighting it. Elves didn't sleep. Like computers before solid state memory, if they lost power everything was lost. Their energy patterns were their mind, and so their mind could not shut down without their energy becoming disrupted without control, killing them.

So she'd sat there in the room, not quite knowing how to fold up her legs under her since she'd never had legs before and just trying to find an arrangement that didn't require joints going the wrong way and watched her Father sleep. She'd been made from Zero, by Dr. Weil and his team (including Ciel's ancestress): X had only worked on helping her interface with reploids and androids, but X was the one she wanted to call Father.

Nothing to do but sit there and think. About how wrong this was, about how she had to stop it, but the weakness in X's mental defenses the virus had used to take him over wasn't one that she could use to cure him. She'd told herself there wasn't really anything she could do, and hated herself for being happy that she could just sit back and watch innocent people get killed. She had prayed for someone to kill her, and now she couldn't kill her Father?

She _couldn't_.

Not when she'd seen so much terrible death. She'd been the center of so much death, and yet she'd never personally killed anyone before. Not by her own choice. To start with him?

Zero had been easy by comparison. Zero was like her, and she'd rather have died, except she'd just been a fool.

Now that they had left that room, Father didn't approve of sitting around moping. True, sometimes sad things happened and moping was inevitable, but sitting around didn't help, you needed to do something to either distract yourself or solve the problem.

Also, Father was trying to remember Dr. Cain's paleobiology research and put it together with the data Neo Arcadia had to see what they could to do to speed up the spread of Ground Zero's habitable area so they could do more farming that wasn't hydroponic. A lot of humans wanted to get away from reploids, and vice versa, after all that had happened. If they could be self-sufficient, that would help with the resentment reploids felt for those who had profited from their suffering and death, even if it had been Copy-X's doing and the humans hadn't had a choice in the matter either. The gene pool wasn't large enough to shoot them, and Copy-X had been trying to ensure humanity's survival, but there were other ways of making sure that people complied with the laws. Like those about bearing enough children.

There wasn't a living human who hadn't grown up constantly aware of how limited the food supply was even before Copy-X had started using that to enforce his laws. The idea of having control over their own food supply? Of living someplace where fruit grew on trees?

They were _so _there.

Zero and Aurora had _not _been helping, since Aurora moping tugged at the heartstrings and Zero had kept poking his systems the way Aurora had, going, 'Pay attention to me!' even if he wasn't actually aware that was the message he was sending.

Which was why X had finally kicked Zero out of bed, pulled him and Aurora outside the specific old ruins that had become 'the house,' and told them to go do some father-daughter bonding.

As X went back to bed and pulled the covers over his head with unnecessary firmness, Zero and Aurora tried not to stare at each other too obviously or too awkwardly.

X could just picture it. The time she'd spent with him was the closest Aurora had ever come to being treated like a normal person instead of a near-worshipped heroine or an accursed monster, mother or destroyer. On top of her general feelings of guilt there was going to be anger too, because her entire existence was, in a very real way, _Zero's fault_.

X had just stuck someone who didn't know how to start a conversation in any way besides metaphorically tugging on his sleeve, who didn't know how to open up to people because he'd been the one to open her up and help her talk about it… He'd just stuck a traumatized person who was no longer a child with _Zero_.

They'd probably stand around for hours trying to think of something to do, trying cliché conversation starters like 'how are you' and 'nice weather,' that were replied to in monosyllables since they both barely got social conversation, let alone useless conversation, until they got frustrated enough to stop watching what they were saying and let themselves talk about the important things.

Aurora was Zero's daughter, and she'd been kidnapped and tortured and used by Weil, then kidnapped and used by Elpizo, then trapped inside her body, helpless. Before they'd left Neo Arcadia, X had needed to stare her down and tell her to return the tools she'd taken from the medical labs right _now, _young lady, quite a few times. It wasn't that he'd been trying to keep her from getting her hands on a weapon for self-defense. That was an exercise in futility: Aurora was born of Zero's energy, and design. Even if X hadn't spent years with her, that would have been enough to prove that she wasn't going to be satisfied until she had the ability to dismember things when necessary.

X didn't mind letting her have a weapon if it made her feel safer, but precision equipment was rare these days, and very hard to replace without the tools to make the tools to make the tools. They'd almost caught up to the pre-Cataclysm era's ability to do precision machining, and then Dr. Weil happened and the Elf Wars destroyed all that precious infrastructure. Well, at least he remembered how they'd built it up from around this level back in 21XX.

So, when she stopped stealing lab equipment, that meant she'd gotten herself a welder, a discarded staff weapon she could fix up, or _something _that wasn't going to be an irreplaceable and vital antique for the next twenty years, and he'd refrained from bringing it up so she could feel like it was a secret.

If X was the kind of person who had put money into the Maverick Hunter betting pools, he would have bet that they'd stand around awkwardly for an hour or so, possibly start wandering down the trail outside the house so that they would be doing _something_, and then Aurora would lose her temper and attack Zero. Obviously, Zero would defeat her very easily, but after that he'd know how to treat her. He hadn't been able to deal with having a daughter even when he'd been awake during the ELF wars, but he knew how to deal with rookies who needed to learn how to fight.

X didn't approve of people bonding or communicating through fighting, but not everyone worked the way he did.

So: awkwardness, fighting, Zero teaching while Aurora was still seriously fighting, then both of them viewing it as a lesson and bonding, then _maybe _sitting and talking after the lesson, and then going to find someone to patch them up so X wouldn't find out they'd been fighting. That should keep them busy for a few hours.

It said something that he was willing to manipulate two people who were essentially family into fighting each other so that he could _get some work done around here for once, _but he already knew he wasn't back to his old self yet. Not to mention that he wasn't really manipulating them: the confrontation would have happened anyway. Getting them to bury the hatchet without fighting: now _that _would have taken a lot of manipulation.

Whatever let him sleep at night.


	7. Descendants of Darkness

_In which there is Father-Daughter Bonding. With violence._

_Because the Dark Elf is, for all intents and purposes, a Wily. At least it's better than the alternative. Also, I like family relationships in my fanfiction. _

_Zero's eyes: generally, his sprites have blue eyes and they're green for dialogue, but there's anime cutscenes where they're yellow, on top of X5 and such. There's a Higurashi amv "What Hinamizawa Needs" to a Reliant K song about mood rings that's kind of funny. Sickness that drives people homicidally insane, people with a tendency to flip out and start killing people… I found thinking about Zero and the virus in that context hilarious, but it might just be me. Apparently Capcom's non-Cataclysm Zero backstory is that Wily wasn't insane enough to release him when he was going to kill all humans, which… Not insane enough? Are we talking about the same Dr. Wily? But some kind of mental state display might have been handy for that. "Black, black means… You know what? I'll wait until I'm dead to unleash this one on the world…"_

* * *

Zero had recognized the Dark Elf as familiar, as kin, even without his memories. The patterns of her energy, her 'aura' were so like his own. He'd only known her briefly: when he was woken up for the war Weil had already taken her, obviously, and then he'd had to force her to undo all the damage as quickly as she could, which the baby elves still hadn't forgiven him for. After that, he'd gone right back to sleep.

After he'd gotten his memories back, first he'd felt sorry for her. Then she'd pulled that idiotic stunt, but he'd pulled quite a few idiotic stunts in his time. She'd looked frail in that body without armor or weapons, mostly harmless. He really should have known that mostly harmless wasn't harmless, after knowing X all these years.

It had made him see her as like him, sure, but all of his bad traits.

When she screamed in frustration after he'd given up on getting out of this without a fight and goaded her a bit, he'd expected her to try punching him or something, the kind of thing people who had gotten their idea of unarmed combat from human movies tried.

Instead she'd tried to throttle him, and when he'd easily grabbed her arms (which didn't have very powerful motors at all: they needed to upgrade this body if she was going to use it for more than standing around talking) she'd kicked. He'd just taken it in the middle of his boot out of habit, but it was a good thing he'd automatically blocked with the spot where his armor was thickest, since it turned out she had a little knife, or a sharpened piece of alloy, in between her toes.

If it weren't for his armor and the fact she barely had any leg strength by reploid standards, that could have actually done some damage, he'd found after he threw her down on the ground and got it away from her. "Did you make this yourself?" It wasn't quite a mono-molecular edge, but it _was _sharp. Maybe she _had_ been spending all that time in the lab for reasons besides trying to make herself useful so X would forgive her.

"Give it back!" She tried thrashing a bit.

Somehow, her making this and trying to attack him with it, _him, _the red demon, the god of destruction, the cataclysm, was the cutest thing he'd ever seen, and he'd not only dated Iris but resisted the determined face of X's famous older brother.

"Let me go!"

"Stop just thrashing around and try to get some leverage," he scolded her, and found himself bombarded with memories of teaching countless of his unit's rookies. And X, although X had approached the whole thing as problems to be solved, so there hadn't been this angry thrashing. No, the air of being pissed off at the world in general and him and particular really was reminding him of Forte. "And just because you're in a physical body right now doesn't mean you're stuck with physical weapons. Get a welder or medical cutter next time. Cerveau had these ones with very precise beams."

"X made me put them back," she grumbled, settling a bit to wait for an opening.

"Why did you attack me, when you know you can't kill me like that?" Did she know?

"You know what you said."

"So what were you going to do about it?"

"I was…" She hadn't even really thought that far. She had just been so _angry_, at him and Weil and, and everything.

"Wound? Maim?"

She didn't want to admit that no, she didn't really want to do that, because that rubbed in how stupid attacking him was. You shouldn't attack someone unless you had a good reason, X had taught her that. And there was no reason that was worth it except saving the lives of others. Sometimes you had to fight to kill. Sometimes you needed to fight to capture, the way the Irregular Hunters had, but it was _never _alright to fight to make someone suffer, or just because you were angry at them. "No, Father would be angry." Father would be very, very disappointed in her, she realized. Maybe even more disappointed than he already was, and that thought took the fight out of her.

"You just wanted to hit me. You wanted to make me understand what bringing up Weil did to you. You wanted to force me to understand how you felt, to beat it into my thick skull," the metaphor was almost making a joke, "and any physical pain involved was more of a side effect, not the goal." Zero might not get other people, but he knew that feeling. "I think you really do take after Forte." He patted her on the head.

"I'm not a Wilybot," she muttered.

"Well, you're not a Weilbot," he countered. "We're not letting him have you. You're stuck with me, and X. Count your blessings, at least you didn't turn out like Harpuia." Much less Sigma. It was like X's children were cursed.

Well, they kind of were. He, and the virus and everything that resulted from it, were Wily's curse on Light's descendants.

And Aurora thought she didn't deserve the name of Lightbot. How ironic.

"Your uncles weren't bad people. They could have taken over the world, but they choose not to: that was why Dr. Wily gave up on them and built me." He patted her on the head. "Your uncle Forte helped save the world a few times, actually." Like she'd saved it, once. "When's your birthday?"

"Why?"

"No reason." He'd ask X. "I'd show you how to get out of holds like this now, but your servo motors are crap. There's no sense showing you what you can do with them when you're going to get an upgrade. Maybe I could raid a backup station, get it to make a spare body and get X to remodel it for you. I look like a girlybot anyway. People started calling me that before I even got turned on."

That made her turn her head to look up at him. He would teach her how to fight? How to not be helpless? And Zero's body was an unparalleled killing machine, everyone knew that.

"You're my daughter," he explained. "Of course you tried to kill me when you thought you had a good reason: I killed _my _father. If you hadn't underestimated X, then it would have been a decent idea." Wasn't her fault he'd outsmarted her. "You're not the first Wilybot to underestimate a Lightbot and get shut down because of it." He stroked her hair this time. "You were trying to save X," he reminded her. "That's the last thing I'd ever get angry at someone about. Look." He sighed.

"X fights for everyone. That's X. Neither of us are like him. Iris tried to be like him and failed, Ciel, well, she tries. I fight for the people I care about. Sometimes I have to save the world to do that. We're both fighting for X. We're both willing to screw the rest of the world for him, but we don't want to because that would hurt him. It's not the best way to be, but no one else can be like X. He can't even be like himself sometimes. That's why he needs us to be there, so he has something to hold on to. I remember before I was sealed away, I remember when I was woken up for the Elf Wars, and I remember his cyber elf self." X really did…

"He needs me." And that was as precious and as crushing as responsibility as Iris' love had been. "So stop pretending you're going to try to kill me, because you're not a bad kid. You wouldn't do that to him, now that you know what it'd do to him. It's better to fight for the world than a few people, sure, but it's a lot better to fight for a few people, or even one person, than just for yourself. You're like me. And that's why you're nothing like Weil."

She looked something between terrified and hopeful. Begging and unable to if it was true because what if it wasn't?

"You're not like him," he repeated. "Sure, part of why you attacked me was selfish, but even if love is selfish that's a lot better than only loving yourself." He lay down on the ground himself, next to her, looking up at the sky. "So it's ok. The last thing I'm going to blame anyone for is caring about X too much. He deserves it."

Zero paused. "That might run in the family too. Both families. X's older brother was a lot like him. I fought X, once." In the confusion of the fifth maverick war. "I still didn't want to hurt him. Those are two different things, fighting and hurting. So I don't mind you fighting me or trying to protect him. We're not very good people, so sometimes we attack people because there's a message we need to get across. X is a good person, so he only attacks people if they need to die. And then there are people who are good people who kill too much. Harpuia just randomly saved my live once. And this was after I killed Copy-X."

"Harpuia?" Really?

"Really. I was wandering out in the desert because… Long story."

Her hand found a pebble and curled around it. It was amazing to be able to move objects, to have that control over what was going on. "Have we done enough bonding yet?"

Zero felt a little hurt. "I'll tell it to you if you really want to hear it."

"I want to go home." It had been hours, and she missed Father.

He rolled easily into a couching position, and offered her a hand up. "Well, we'd better get you cleaned up first, though, otherwise he'll kill us. And that should give us time to think about what we're going to tell him we did. Bonding, father-daughter stuff…" Zero tried to see if there was anything in his database, because hell if he knew. "Ponies are extinct, but there's probably a gene sample _somewhere_." Unless they _all_ had gotten bombed out of existence over the last couple centuries.

Aurora looked up at him like he was insane, which was generally a rather accurate assessment, and ignored his hand.

"You know, if X and I keep living together like this, I'm probably going to make it formal," Zero told her. "Not that I care," he was X's anyway, "but there are people who care about that sort of thing." It would probably make X's day. "The good news is, that means you'll be, well, more related to X. The bad news is, that means Harpuia and the rest of them are going to be your brothers and sisters. Unless I kill them. Although I'll probably keep the ninja, either way, since he died before Copy-X did instead of keeping it going after he died."

"Ninja?"

"Phantom. One of your uncles was a ninja too, by the way. Shadowman was much better than Phantom, though, although that's partly because he was one of _my _father's favorites. He got a little special something, like me, and Forte too." He broke the stalemate by leaning down a little further to take her hand and pull it up. "I should tell you these stories when X is there, he'd want to hear about his family."

"You killed them."

"Yes."

"And you're fine with that."

"It's not that simple." X had told her that Zero's eyes were like an old toy called a mood ring sometimes. Generally he kept his emotions under control on the battlefield and they remained blue, but he'd also seen green and yellow. And red. When she looked up, she thought she saw purple, and drew back because she was still locked in this body, he had no idea what he'd done with her knife… and none of that would do her any good anyway, if he wanted to kill her.

The color only deepened, watching her and knowing she was still afraid of him. "There's nothing I can do about it now. I regretted it while it was happening, but that doesn't change anything." Didn't make it better. "When I was Commander Zero, I never remembered the cataclysm. I hated myself for the massacre and then the virus. When I woke up, and was Zero without any memories, I didn't care about anything except X, and then you. Fighting was what I was, and Ciel's cause was a good one, so I fought. That was the me that got all my memories back, so I didn't really see a difference between fighting for Ciel and fighting for my father's beliefs. It's all killing people to create a peaceful world, just killing different people. I'm a weapon, not a hero: the only thing that matters is who I fight for, and there's no one I can trust with that but X, in the end." Even Ciel had been guided by her memory of X. "I don't want you to end up like me." He tugged her in, held her. "I'm no good at protecting people, but you're family and I'll try."

He wanted to protect her. No one had but, "Father…"

He knew that she wasn't referring to him, and wondered if she'd ever have a name for him, since she'd given X the obvious one. "I'll take you to him. I'll tell him I was showing you a few moves and get my boots off when I come in so he doesn't have a chance to notice the damage." She'd actually managed to nick him, with legs as weak as that! It had gone a good centimeter in. He wished he'd been around instead of sealed when she was growing up… Wait. "You have children. That means X will have grandchildren."

She blinked at that.

"That's going to be fun to watch." He'd already started spoiling them, with cakes and rubber balls. Once he had time on his hands?

Teleportation took energy, and they were still setting up Ciel's generators, so they walked back over hills of almost-bare rock, taking care to step around the patches of lichen that clung to them. Zero thought they were a better sign that this land would recover than some miraculous flower sprouting out of the ground, some pretty delicate thing. The lichen, with its grays, greens, whites and yellows almost seemed like part of the rocks, an integral part of the land, something that couldn't be separated from it. That couldn't truly die as long as this planet survived.

Or something. X was better at putting that sort of thing into words.


	8. Rest

_And we're done. This chapter just has the ending and a thingy that's borderline omake._

_

* * *

_

It was very easy to remodel one of Zero's spare bodies, actually. All it took was changing the shape of the face a bit, getting rid of the armor, and applying some hair dye. X did the work himself, careful and methodical so the sculpting would stay that way, and when he was finally satisfied he undid the lock holding her into her current body, setting the jewelry aside.

Aurora didn't immediately escape the body she'd been sealed into, looking between them until X nodded. "It's alright, Aurora. Go on."

Zero would have thought she'd enjoy her freedom, but she dived into the new body the instant after she finished emerging from the old. Was she still too ashamed to show her true face?

She was willing to take X's hands when he offered them to help her stand up. "How do you feel?"

"Everything's sharper, clearer. And it feels a lot better suited to me." Than even a model X had designed just for her.

Zero nodded, unsurprised. These bodies had been designed for him, not a normal android, by a master who knew exactly what he was doing. X was a good engineer with a lot of experience and the occasional insight, but he wasn't Dr. Wily. "Why don't you go test it out? You should have some time to get used to it before we start practice."

She looked surprised, glancing at the drawer the jewelry was in. They weren't going to reseal her?

"Your daughters are having a good time with Alouette, but they haven't seen you in awhile. You could visit them," X suggested.

Apparently they weren't. "I'm sorry, Father." She'd wanted to spend time with him: she hadn't thought that her daughters would want to spend time with her.

"There's no need to apologize." X continued putting the tools and other miscellany away. "Would you mind taking your old body to a factory?" It was subpar, but there were still people waiting for bodies who would be happy even with one like this. Even though he'd deliberately crippled its physical strength and combat potential, it was still superior to an old Neo Arcadian model in every other way.

"Of course Father," she said, picking it up. "Goodbye?"

"See you later."

When she teleported out all Zero could say was, "Finally," as he came up behind X. Wrapping his arms around him, he lowered his head to nibble at his neck.

X tilted his neck obligingly, and Zero had to wonder if it was an aftereffect of the virus or a sign of his brokenness that X was still so willing to submit to whatever Zero wanted. Maybe X hadn't been able to get rid of all the effects the obedience programming had on his mind, maybe he wanted someone to direct him and tell him what was right after he lost sight of it - If that was the case, he was out of luck: that was what Zero needed X for. He couldn't be X's moral compass when he couldn't even be his own – and couldn't trust himself to fight anymore, maybe he'd just missed Zero for so long that he was too happy Zero was here to get upset about anything Zero did to him, maybe it was because X had lost the ability to care for so many people that now almost all his heart's compassion for others and desire to help them was centered on Zero, or maybe it was all of the above.

It made him handle him like centuries-old porcelain, and X was literally a centuries-old work of art, so that was just what he deserved. Worn down, broken, and Zero's to piece back together.

"I want all of your attention," he told X, as he turned him around and watched those eyes focus entirely on him, instead of X splitting his attention between this world and the virus' web.

Zero was still connected to the web. In a sense, he was that web, but now that people were starting to adjust to this peace they had stopped coming to up to him with questions that they certainly didn't need his help with because they wanted to know that he was there and that he cared. Now, most of the time it's enough to respond to anyone who pings him with a distant brush of affection. He couldn't stop having part of his mind taken up by the web, but he could tune it out, or rather tune all but one strand of it out.

"Are you happy?" He asked, remembering the last time he'd asked that question.

"Yes. You're here."

At first Zero didn't like that response. X had listed more reasons the last time he'd asked. Yet, once he thought about it, he realized that it was a good sign that that was all it took. Maybe X had needed to justify the fact he felt happy before because he'd known that everything was very wrong on some level.

There was true peace (even if details were still being worked out and concerns allayed), people were being taken care of (even if it would take a long time for all reploids to have proper bodies and humans to be self-sufficient), his family was alright (even if Aurora was only slowly reconciling with Zero and the guardians were going to have to stand trial as soon as anything like an unbiased jury existed), and Zero was happy.

"What about you?"

"Me?" Why was X asking? "Of course I am."

He could tell that Zero had been thinking about him. "You were worrying about me again. I'm trying not to worry you."

"X, you… of course I'm worried." After what had happened to X, of course Zero was worried about him. "That's _inevitable, _not something to feel _guilty _about."

"I'm sorry," X said, and Zero wondered who he was saying it to. The world he'd left behind when that became the only way to protect it?

"Look, I'm not going to expect you to be okay overnight." He could _see_ what had happened to X's mind. "You looked after everyone, and me too, for a century, right? So I'll look after you for a century. That's fair, isn't it?" X should be okay by then. Hopefully.

No, this was X. Of course he would be.

It was obvious that X was trying not to cry. At first, the thought almost panicked Zero, because what was he supposed to do if X cried? How could he make him feel better?

And X would be crying, X had gone through all of that, because of him. How could he handle the guilt? This wasn't something else to blame on the virus. He had made the decision to seal himself away.

But X was X, and X probably needed to cry, to let it out, and Zero didn't know how to make him let go and start crying any more than he would know how to make him stop once he started. So he just held him, and tried not to think about the tears that fell silently on his breastplate.

Someday, they would stop. For now, that knowledge was enough.

_

* * *

"What are you laughing about?" Harpuia snapped at Fefnir._

"I just realized something. It's traditional for humans to hate mothers-in-law, right?"

"That woman is _not _my mother," Copy-X said, low and dangerous, wishing he wasn't still prohibited from performing violent actions. X might have fixed that demeaning stutter when he was infected, but Zero had thought keeping the booby trap Weil had put in place to destroy him if he fought was a _fantastic _idea. He couldn't even use his buster.

"I _have _already spent years trying to kill her," Harpuia agreed. Even when he hadn't admitted to himself that he knew that Ciel was Master X's builder and he was suffering this because of her. What was the point of getting infected by the maverick virus if he didn't get to kill either of the two humans he really, really wanted to? X had given Aurora the honor of assuring Weil's demise.

"Well, you'd better be civil at the wedding," Phantom pointed out.

"We are _not _inviting her to the wedding."

"Like you'll have a choice."


End file.
